Ogonyok
| Ogonyok Огонёк
|
|
|---|---|
| description | Russian weekly magazine |
| publishing company | SAO Kommersant , Moscow |
| First edition | December 9, 1899 |
| Frequency of publication | weekly |
| Sold edition | 72,150 copies |
| Range | 0.330 million readers |
| Editor-in-chief | Viktor Loschak |
| editor | SAO Kommersant, Moscow |
| Web link | www.ogoniok.com |
Ogonyok (Russian: Огонёк) is a weekly on Monday Russian Illustrated . The name Ogonyok is the diminutive form of the word " fire " (Russian: огонь) in the sense of "little fire".
founding
Ogonyok was the first illustrated magazine in Russia on December 9, 1899 . Strictly speaking, it was a weekly supplement to the newspaper "Birschewyje vedomosti" (stock exchange news). It was only three years later that Ogonyok became an independent magazine, but a few years later it disappeared again.
1923 to 1952
From this oblivion, Ogonyok only reappeared in the Soviet Union when it was re-founded on April 1, 1923 by the columnist and journalist Mikhail Koltsov . Kolzow remained editor-in-chief until 1938, then he switched to Pravda as a star journalist and became Stalin's “court journalist”.
Before that, however, in 1936, he reported for Ogonyok from Spain about the civil war there . His reports are legendary beyond the borders of Russia - but historically more than just controversial. Ernest Hemingway later wrote that "Kolzow served him as a real role model for the Soviet journalist Karkow in my novel ' Whom the Hour Strikes '".
1953 to 1986
In 1953 the poet and playwright Anatoly Sofronov became the new editor-in-chief, whose activity is very controversial from today's perspective. Among other things, he made Ogonyok a hate speech against the courageous literary magazine Nowy mir ("New World") and its editor-in-chief Alexander Twardowski .
Twardowski had dared to print a story by the then completely unknown Alexander Solzhenitsyn with the title " A day in the life of Ivan Denisovich ", which described a day of the prisoner of the same name in a Soviet labor camp.
Ogonyok also fed - albeit unintentionally - the rumor mill in the West: In October 1959 the magazine published a picture of the test pilots of the Soviet space program: Belokonew, Katschur, Grachev, Savadsky and Mikhailov. A journalist from the American news agency AP concluded that the magazine had published a picture of budding cosmonauts.
However, since none of these names were later mentioned in the Soviet press, AP wrote that all five had died. "There was also a harrowing death story for each of them," wrote RIA Novosti five decades later.
1986 to 2001
Sofronov was replaced immediately after Gorbachev came to power in April 1986 and replaced by Yuri Korotitsch, who overnight made Ogonyok the "flagship" of reform supporters and thus perestroika. After the coup in August 1991, however, Korotitsch suffered the fate of his predecessor and was replaced by a new editor-in-chief named Gushchev.
He was one of the first Russian journalists to publish enlightening articles about Stalin's crimes and had the courage to denounce current grievances about oligarchs and corrupt officials. He and his successors also published long suppressed works by persecuted and secretive authors in Ogonyok.
Due to internal differences, some journalists left Ogonyok around 1988, including the son of the renowned author and perestroika “pioneer” Yegor Yakovlev : After his departure, his junior Vladimir Yakovlev founded the now highly regarded daily newspaper “ Kommersant ”.
present
Russia's oldest weekly magazine is still published today and contains illustrated articles from politics, culture and business, interviews and photo reports. It no longer has the unique meaning of earlier years, but is still a landmark in the literary landscape for many people in Russia and for Russian expats around the world. For decades, Ogonyok has also been famous for its caricatures and crossword puzzles, the first of which was published in the May 1923 issue.
On June 11, 2007, the 5000th edition of Ogonyok appeared with 80 instead of 64 pages. The edition is 72,150 copies, the number of readers 330,000. Around 25 percent of readers live in Moscow, 14 percent in Novosibirsk and 7 percent in Saint Petersburg, the remaining 67 percent are scattered all over the Russian Federation .
Incidentally, exactly 313 readers of Ogonyok are described by the publisher as political VIPs. These include ministers and members of the State Duma as well as Russian President Vladimir Putin .
Today's editor-in-chief is called Viktor Loschak . He was born in 1952 in what is now the Ukrainian port city of Odessa . Both as a correspondent for the daily newspaper " Izvestia " and as editor-in-chief of the magazine " Moskowskije Novosti " he was largely able to maintain his journalistic independence. One of the reasons why, in addition to several other journalism awards in 2003, he was also named “Most Important Russian Editor of the Year”.
When the publishing house OVA-PRESS wanted to implement a new concept shortly after taking office as Ogonyok editor-in-chief in September 2003 , Loschak drew the consequences in November 2004 and left. After the failure of the new concept, the publisher brought it back in June 2005.
literature
- Wolfgang Kasack (Ed.): Ogonjok. The best stories from the Russian perestrojka magazine Munich, Piper 1990, ISBN 3-492-03397-0
- Dirk Kretzschmar / Antje Leetz (eds.): Ogonjok: a cross section from the Perestroika magazine Reinbek near Hamburg, Rowohlt-Taschenbuch-Verlag 1991, ISBN 3-499-18844-9
- Marina Albee (ed.): The new freedom: Gorbachev's politics on the test bench. Letters to the editor to the magazine "Ogonjok" 1987 - 90 Munich List, 1990 ISBN 3-471-77230-8